Monkey Head or Ball Swage

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Monkey Head or Ball Swage

Monkey Head or Coconut Swage

Photos from Jerry Martin, digitally processed by Jock Dempsey.
We don’t usually include swage blocks on the anvil gallery but this tool is so unusual we had to include it here.

This is one of the strangest most unusual tools I have ever seen. Obviously it was made for working sheet metal doing sinking and raising plus special shapes. Our title is made up based on what it looks like. If you have ever seen one of these or who made it please let us know.

FOOLED BY IMPROBABILITY!

When examining this item I thought about it possibly being made from a ball mill ball. Then Jan Kochansky wrote in that it looked like the shape of worn out grinding mill balls. After some study and discussion it became apparent that the “nose” was formed by the ball getting stuck with one side in the gap between rotating mill shells. Then freely rotating balls on either side of it ground the two depressions on oposite sides. . .

They say that given a room full of monkeys with typewriters and infinite time they could write one of Shakespeare’s plays. . . In this case given millions of ball mill balls and decades of workers sorting through them a useful looking shape was found. On the other hand, I think the roomful of monkeys would break all the typewriters to pieces and eventually kill each other from the boredom of being locked up in a room full of nothing but broken typewriters and other monkeys. Infinite randomness doen not mean infinite probability.

Approximated 6-1/4″ to 6-1/2″ Diameter, weight 40 pounds.

Four depressions, two hemishpherical, two special.
One raised ridge (the nose). Hemispherical and ovoid surfaces.